Welcome to The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration. Every Friday, we deliver the latest updates on election policy around the country, including nationwide trends and recent legislative activity. 

In this week’s Ballot Bulletin, we cover 12 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.

Weekly highlights

The big takeaways from the past week's legislative actions. 

Lawmakers in three states acted on 12 bills over the last week, 41 fewer than last week. Six state legislatures are still in regular or special sessions. 

• No bills were enacted this week. One bill was enacted during the same week in 2024, three bills were enacted during the same week in 2023, and two bills were enacted during the same week in 2022.
• Legislators acted on 15 bills in 2024 and 27 bills in 2023 during the same week. 
• All 12 of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, none are in a state with a Republican trifecta, and none are in states with a divided government.  
• The most active bill categories this week were ballots and voting materials (four), election types and contest-specific procedures (three), and Election Day voting and enforcement and election fraud (two). 
• We are currently following 4,958 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 3,303 bills.

In the news

A glance at what's making headlines in the world of election law.

• On Dec. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Texas could use a redrawn congressional map that aimed to net five additional Republican districts in the 2026 elections. The ruling blocks a lower court order, which would have required Texas to return to districts adopted in 2021. 
• On Dec. 2, the U.S. Department of Justice sued six states in an effort to obtain their statewide voter registration lists. The lawsuits, which seek records from Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, argue that the U.S. Attorney General is entitled to obtain the lists under the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. The agency previously filed similar lawsuits against eight other states.
• On Dec. 2, a federal appeals court ordered a U.S. district court judge to reconsider his ruling blocking portions of a Georgia law that prohibited distributing food and water within 25 feet of a voter waiting in line at a polling place. A three-judge panel on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Judge J.P. Boulee’s 2023 ruling should be reconsidered in light of the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court case Moody v. NetChoice, LLC. 
• On Dec. 1, officials in four states agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, allowing election officials to access the federal government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program to help determine if voters are citizens. In exchange, states must provide driver’s license records to improve the database. Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio filed the lawsuit in 2024, arguing that former President Joe Biden’s administration was blocking them from verifying the citizenship status of individuals who had registered to vote.

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

No bills were enacted in the past week. One bill was enacted during the same week in 2024. Three bills were enacted in 2023, and two bills were enacted in 2022. To see all enacted bills, click here.

Nine bills passed both chambers of a state legislature. To see the full list of all bills awaiting 

gubernatorial action, click here.

No bills were vetoed in the past week. Seventy-one bills have been vetoed so far this year. One bill was vetoed during this period in 2024 and 2023, and no bills were vetoed during this period in 2022. To see all vetoed bills, click here.

The big picture

Zooming out to see the macro-level trends in election policy so far this year. 

Enacted bills

No bills were enacted this week. The chart below shows the number of enacted bills in 2025 compared to previous years.

The chart below shows the number of bills enacted over the first 49 weeks of each year.

All bills

We are following 4,958 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. 

• Trifecta status
  • Democratic: 1,814 (36.6%)
  • Republican: 2,286 (46.1%) 
  • Divided: 858 (17.3%) 

• Partisan sponsorship
  • Democratic: 1,923 (38.9%)
  • Republican: 2,391 (48.2%)
  • Bipartisan: 413 (8.3%)
  • Other: 231 (4.6%)

We were following 3,303 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

• Trifecta status
  • Democratic: 1,627 (49.3%)
  • Republican: 1,139 (34.5%) 
  • Divided: 537 (16.2%) 

• Partisan sponsorship
  • Democratic: 1,504 (45.5%)
  • Republican: 1,233 (37.3%)
  • Bipartisan: 377 (11.4%)
  • Other: 189 (5.7%)

See the charts below for a comparison of total bills between 2023 and 2025 and a breakdown of all 2025 legislation by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.